10 Selects from Todd Rundgren pulled from a 1997 Japanese music research book on Todd Rundgren. I recently picked up a Japanese music book titled Todd Rundgren – […]
Jackie McLean On Mars (1979)
A beautiful portrait of the magnetic artist and educator who played with Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Art Blakey, and many others.
Alto saxophonist Jackie McLean is a true jazz legend, but during the filming of Ken Levis’ Jackie McLean On Mars, he was more of an educator than a working musician. In the early scenes of the film, McLean is asked how he felt about being a legend, and replies, “I feel like an exploited, poor musician in 1976, if you want to know how I feel, and I also feel like a professor of history at the University of Hartford. If I feel good about anything, it’s about being able to turn down jobs that are offered to me for scale and below… that’s what I feel good about.”
The doc features some incredible, candid footage of McLean in his element as an educator. In one scene, he’s seen joyfully conducting a group of children as they count, directing each number as if it were a note in a composition. In another, he gets into a heated discussion with university students on how to work within the commercial music industry, the importance of preserving jazz as American classical music, and Sun Ra.
Watch the full documentary below:
